


fly me to the moon.

by teethrotter



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dissociation, Gay Male Character, Grief/Mourning, Headcanon, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Not Canon Compliant, Paranoia, Poetry, Religion, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, The Yotsuba Group, Vomiting, very vaguely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 16:04:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20726951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teethrotter/pseuds/teethrotter
Summary: A hand-written Parnassus arrives too late to offer salvation.





	fly me to the moon.

**Author's Note:**

> i continue to indulge myself with content of two characters who canonically interacted for just a few pages and yet became one of my most treasured ships: the autobiography
> 
> as is the case with all of my work ( but especially anything related to the yotsuba group ), this is heavily headcanon-based, but it should be able to be followed by anyone who doesn't lie in my close circle as well :)
> 
> tw for mental illness struggles, suicidal thoughts, vague self-harm, and brief mentions of many others

It had only begun as a slight change in protocol. A miniscule tweaking, an insignificant fluke. Nothing acutely abnormal and nothing that would merge into habit.

The Saturday had mirrored any of the other Saturdays that had passed since Hatori’s death: groggy, sluggish, excruciating. It was winter now and the air was biting, so he kept the doors and windows securely fastened. Nothing abnormal under those circumstances.

He’d answered the door on a whim. Typically, if he was not expecting company, he would simply allow the stranger to eventually realize their mistake or lose interest. This one time, he was drawn to answer; perhaps it had been through mere absent-mindedness or perhaps it had been through something far more compelling. There was no way to tell.

Shimura’s stomach and heart simultaneously plummeted as he eyed the vaguely familiar personage upon his doorstep.

“Good afternoon, and my apologies for the intrusion. Is this the residence of Shimura Suguru?”

The formalities were useless. Shimura doubted that she’d truly forgotten his face, even if they had only interacted in person once or twice before. He certainly hadn’t forgotten hers.

His mouth was dry, his tongue all but darting down his throat. Manners were a luxury that he could no longer afford. “Yes. Good afternoon. What can I do for you?”

He can’t bring himself to ask her name when he already knows the answer. It’s miracle enough that he’s managed to convey any semblance of coherency; the previous time he’d seen her had been while attending the funeral.

“My name is Hatori Chiho. Hatori Arayoshi was my husband. May I come in?”

Shimura is endlessly grateful for her composure and her willingness to take charge. Any remaining rationality or ability on his end vanished as soon as he glimpsed the decently sized stack of papers in her hands.

“Oh. Of course. Please.”

She’d passed the threshold, politely donning the solitary pair of house slippers adjoining the entrance. She did not attempt to make any degree of customary small talk, for which Shimura was eternally grateful; his throat was visibly working around the equally visible lump that had lodged itself there. _His_ children truly were the spitting image of their mother.

He managed to direct her into a seat along his sofa, numbly depositing himself into the armchair adjacent to it. A sparingly decorated coffee table separated them, the baleful papers quickly finding their place there.

“I do not intend to impose any longer than necessary; I don’t know the nature of your relationship with my husband beyond the fact that he seemed to regard you as his close friend. Nor do I need to involve myself in your life any more than I already have. I am thankful for everything you did for him, things that I was unable to do.”

Little did she know. Shimura, of all people, did not deserve her kindness. Not when he’d surreptitiously wanted her husband for himself. Not when he could have prevented his untimely death if he’d only tried a bit harder. If he’d only pressed until his voice was heard. If he’d only made him _stay._

Shimura feels he my vomit. His hands are clammy and shaking so he keeps them clasped firmly upon his thighs. Try as he might, he can’t bring himself to meet her gaze. “Thank you for your words. It was the least I could do. Truly. I don’t deserve that much credit.”

She nods, as if she knows more than she appears. Her features are bold, stony; not harsh, just resigned and without much expression. Guiltily, Shimura is satisfied that there is no need for him to conjure up condolences that he does not honestly believe.

Chiho gestures dismissively to the meager stack of papers. “These were addressed to you. I found them while I was sorting his things.”

Indeed, there is an envelope sitting atop the store. Handwritten in a large, androgynous, organized scrawl is ‘Shimura Suguru’. Despite himself, Shimura feels the sting of tears even before his vision clouds. He blinks.

She makes no mention of the cover-up attempt. “I haven’t read them. I felt it would be inappropriate. I’ve seen enough of his writing in the children’s books he made for Aimi and Hachirou, anyway.”

All he can offer in response is a nod, attempting to subtly swipe his sleeve across his eyes and fix his lips into a straight line.

She graciously continues and Shimura decides then that she is one of the strongest and most gratuitous women he has ever met. “I only came to deliver them. Here, take my phone number in case I need to contact you again. I haven’t quite finished going through all of his possessions.”

Chiho wordlessly exchanges her number for his own and then rises from her temporary seat, her gaze boring holes into his fragility.

“Feel free to contact me at any point. I’m sure the children would be happy to see you again. You’re definitely their favorite of all his coworkers.”

Shimura can’t even bring himself to apologize for his behavior. “Yes, of course. Thank you again. Thank you very much.”

He mechanically stands to guide her to the door, pausing as she retrieves her own shoes and slides the slippers back into place. She does not hesitate, offering him wishes for a splendid remainder of the evening. With that, she leaves nearly as fast as she had come.

Instantly, the papers are watching him. As soon as he glimpses her back, they are demanding his attention. He shuts the door with as little noise as humanly possible, but the intensity of their gaze does not falter for even a second. Now, his hands are visibly damp in their clamminess, but that is the least of his concern.

He does not know the contents of the letter, much less the horrifying heap beneath it. The fingers of panic squeeze around his heart, manually pumping it to match their predetermined tempo, but he finds himself hopelessly numb to any effect they strive to produce. His spine straightens and his heartrate spikes, but he does not delve into panic as he once would have. Instead, Shimura discovers that he is currently secondary to his body and its functioning, drifting just off to its right. The feeling is incomprehensible and alien but, at the same time, creates the sense of detachment and hollowness needed for him to even begin to investigate.

Shimura glides lifelessly to the stack, plucking up the envelope without a second thought. He can see the cadaverous nature of his skin and the imprints that his chilly fingertips transfer onto the paper’s surface, oily and disrespectful, but his mind is elsewhere. Despite the degree of separation between his corporeal body and his spiritual body, his hands tremble.

Robotically, he slices the envelope, taking great care not to crinkle or smudge the open characters of his own name. Inside is a folded piece of paper. Before he can stop, his fingers are working at the folds, unraveling them and smoothing the sheet. His eyes are scanning the manually scribed words and he begins to pray.

‘Dear Shimura –

It’s been a while since I saw you last, at least outside of work. I don’t really count work as one of the times I get to see you, especially with how busy it’s been lately. Once everything calms down with the whole Kira business, I hope we can see each other again!

Anyway, I don’t want you to worry about me; you’re the type of guy to worry about silly things. But I’m okay, I promise. I think Kira is pretty scary, since I’ve always been cowardly like that, but I know you won’t tell anybody. As smart as you are, you’ve probably managed to figure out who it is by now. I can’t decide if I actually want to know who Kira is or if I just want to stay blissfully unaware. Regardless, I know things will calm down soon, and we’ll all be okay. Whoever Kira is, I’m sure he wouldn’t kill one of his own. We’re all too valuable to the company to die, at the very least.

Maybe it’s ironic for me to say this, considering what I’m giving you along with this letter, but enough of the depressing stuff. Hopefully, you’ll be reading this once that’s all over and done with. I’m not sure when I’ll be giving it to you, but at the very latest, it’ll be after all the Kira stuff. So, you shouldn’t have to even think about it!

Do you remember the first time you were in my study? If not, that’s okay. It was the night we sat and talked about Inge and The Smiths and I showed you some of my drafts. Just some small things I was cooking up to maybe publish as children’s books, since Aimi and Hachirou are too big for bedtime stories now.

Remember how I mentioned that I had some poems, too? Well, I’ve decided that I don’t really need them anymore. They’re just reflections of my past; nowadays, they sit in a drawer collecting dust. At the time, you seemed really interested in them, though I still can’t figure out why. Admittedly, most of them are pretty sad, and not particularly masterful or eye-catching. Not my best work, for sure.

Please don’t think I’m giving you these to hurt you. I’m giving them to you because you seemed interested, and because I know you won’t make any judgements on me for what’s in them. To me, it’ll represent the closing of a bad chapter in my life. It’s a step forward and a show of how much I value our friendship. I definitely won’t be hurt if you choose not to read them or if you do and don’t like them; some are from when I was a super angsty teenager. I’m sure they’re horrible. Just laugh at them for me, okay?

Bottom line, I haven’t been as sad as most of these poems are in a very long time. I’ve dated them so you’ll be able to see how I wrote less and less of them as the years went on. If you get too sad, just remember how much I hate sad cats!

See you again soon,

Hatori Arayoshi’

For what felt like hours, Shimura reread the letter. Over and over until he may as well have had it committed to memory, slower and slower each time. He felt nothing and thought nothing.

Hatori genuinely hadn’t seen fate’s suffocating threads fastened over his limbs, his throat, his heart. At the very least, Shimura had met him in person once after the writing of the letter. It had been to feebly comfort him as his impending death loomed above them all.

Finally, Shimura regained the horrid ability to think. A skein began to unravel from his brain and creep down his spinal cord.

_There is a God and He wants me to suffer. God exists to revel in my suffering. I am alive for His amusement._

Despite every fiber of his body simultaneously crying out, begging him to stop, for a moment of reprieve, his disembodied eyes and hands soldiered on. His fingers all but vibrating in their suppressed agony, he began to leaf through the remaining sheets of paper. They were organized chronologically, the most recent pieces resting at the bottom of the pile while the most distant decorated the top.

The poems were paradoxical. Some were professionally written in specific meter, full of stylistic imagery and abstract figurative language, while others were composed without any regard for such structure, haphazardly comprised of raw emotion and intense syntax. Generally, the latter sat nearer to the top of the pile and the former grouped closer to the bottom; there were much less of them, as well.

A broken moan squirmed its way past Shimura’s chapped lips. He had no right to read these. He had no right to Hatori’s mental struggles, his abandonment, his eating disorder, his period of substance abuse and self-harm, insight into his complex sexual orientation. He had no right to know him this intimately.

Hatori’s death hadn’t truly been the result of a car accident: it had been due to seven intentionally placed stabs. Shimura’s knife had penetrated him deepest of all, sunken in to the hilt, effectively severing his spinal cord; he’d stabbed him in the back, after all.

More than the rest, he deserved to die. He was the one who had contributed most to Hatori’s death even if Higuchi’s hand was the one to decisively write the name. He hadn’t tried hard enough at Hatori’s final meeting. He hadn’t tried to protect him despite knowing full well who Kira was. He’d been privy to his final moments and hadn’t even managed to provide him with a mere ounce of reassurance or comfort.

Realistically, dying would be allowing himself to attain what he desired most, and so it wasn’t an option. That didn’t stop him from longing for it every waking second of his life.

Shimura notices the bile rushing up his throat at the last possible second. Without the time to seek an appropriate container, he vomits onto his carpet, just barely avoiding Hatori’s papers. Abruptly, he falls to his knees, body loose and seized in tremors. It’s all he can do not to collapse into his own mess.

_God is real and He will not let me die. He will not let me die until I atone. I can never atone. I can never atone. I can never atone._

He mindlessly begins to sob. His ribcage is spread and wracked with pain, his raw throat further irritated by the uneven and harsh gasps admitted between his lips. Hatori’s works resting securely on the coffee table, he tightly envelopes himself in his own arms, purely out of reflex. If not, then his ribs will split. The odor of his vomit is acrid and noxious but it’s the least he deserves.

Shimura holds no control over his body. It howls and whimpers and chokes, but he feels none of it. Distantly, he ponders if he’s died and gone to hell, but that would be far too merciful.

He desperately gathers the sheets into his arms. He hugs them in a vice grip to his chest. He does not believe his lungs hold any air, but he obscurely hears his mouth somehow force the words forward. His tears and sweat and snot and drool splatter onto his thighs.

“I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you so much. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I can’t take your forgiveness. I killed you. I killed you! _I killed you_!”

Suddenly, Shimura stands. He delivers a weighty kick to the coffee table, not even hearing it tip over and shatter. He screams and clutches the papers so tightly they may tear.

It was just like Hatori to posthumously offer his condolences. To posthumously offer his unconditional forgiveness to his effective killer. Shimura can hardly stand it.

“No! No! _No_! It was me! It was me the whole time! I did it! I _killed_ you! Can’t you see that it’s _all my fault_?!”

His body loses the ability to support its own weight and he falls for the second time. He sprawls over a bed of broken glass and only hopes that it hurts, that it slices just as deep as the seven knives that had impaled Hatori’s body for the rest of them to admire: the example. Dig your own grave, submit to death quietly.

_Et tu, Brute?_

**Author's Note:**

> apologies for any sub-par writing in this piece; it was mainly a little pre-birthday gift to myself :) some connections are made to one of my partner's hatori/shimura focused works, but they aren't relevant enough to be isolated, given that we effectively share this bit of headcanon.
> 
> regardless, thank you for reading!
> 
> https://teethrotter.tumblr.com/


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